After weeks of complaining that Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew had lost his focus and slipped into deep ambivalence about his job, the New York City Board of Education voted 4-to-3 yesterday not to renew Dr. Crew's contract when it expires in June.

Aides to Dr. Crew said he was so disgusted by the board's action that he might leave sooner, raising the possibility that the nation's largest school system, with 1.1. million children, would be left rudderless at a time when it is under enormous pressure to introduce tough new graduation standards and raise test scores.

The vote was another product of the almost constant turmoil in the highest ranks of the school system and the politically charged atmosphere that has long surrounded education issues in New York City. The city has had 10 chancellors in the last 30 years, and 7 were ousted or resigned under pressure. Dr. Crew, who came from Tacoma, Wash., in October 1995, will be the longest-serving chancellor in decades if he finishes out his contract.

The votes to oust Dr. Crew were cast by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's three allies on the board and by Terri Thomson, the Queens member who in recent months has acted as the swing vote. Those members said after the vote that they had been particularly troubled by Dr. Crew's behavior in recent weeks. They cited his persistent refusal to reveal whether he wanted to stay on, his shrugging off a state report charging widespread attendance fraud, and his jibe last week that a City Councilman was ''too short'' to criticize him.

But a supporter of Dr. Crew, William C. Thompson Jr., the board president, said after the vote that ''the mayor's fingerprints are on this'' and that it was ''a recipe for disaster for this school system.''

Dr. Crew kept a low profile yesterday, staying inside his home in Brooklyn Heights with his four grown children, who were visiting for the holidays. He issued a long, at times emotional statement saying that the city's schoolchildren ''will always be in my heart.'' Dr. Crew's spokeswoman, Karen Crowe, said after the vote that he did not come to work yesterday because ''he prefers to be lynched in absentia.''

For his part, Mr. Giuliani said he had not orchestrated the vote against Dr. Crew but wholeheartedly agreed with it. ''There was no willingness to try to take on the kind of reform that was necessary,'' he said of Dr. Crew.

For Dr. Crew, yesterday's vote, which took place at a closed board meeting that lasted less than an hour, ended a tenure marked by several major accomplishments.

Dr. Crew persuaded the State Legislature to curtail the power of the city's 32 local school boards, giving the chancellor more say over the appointment of local superintendents. He ended the automatic promotion of failing students and helped negotiate a deal to end lifelong job protection for principals.

But standardized test scores have largely remained flat, and New York City still lags behind the rest of the state on graduation rates, spending per pupil and the percentage of students taking and passing tough new Regents tests.

Dr. Crew benefited from strong political support for much of his tenure, but his close relationship with Mayor Giuliani deteriorated last April after he fiercely and successfully resisted the mayor's plan to experiment with school vouchers. In May, Mr. Giuliani infuriated Dr. Crew again by persuading a majority of board members to reject the chancellor's $11 billion school construction plan, handing Dr. Crew his first defeat by the board since it hired him in October 1995.

Dr. Crew's statement did not address the vote at all, but alluded to his battle with Mr. Giuliani over vouchers. In the statement, Dr. Crew said that he had realized last spring that ''it might be impossible to restore the solidarity that marked my first three years as chancellor.''

Mr. Giuliani has not publicly criticized Dr. Crew in recent months, but he has frequently complained that the school system is a failure and has refused to say whether Dr. Crew should remain. But one person close to the Giuliani administration said yesterday that the mayor had planned to support a yearlong extension for Dr. Crew because Mr. Giuliani was presumably running for the Senate, and he did not want to face the political repercussions of ousting a popular black chancellor.

But the person close to the administration, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Giuliani's anger at Dr. Crew boiled over this week after Dr. Crew made a last-minute request for a raise and a pension supplement. Dr. Crew makes $245,000 a year, compared with $195,000 for Mr. Giuliani.

A high-ranking board official said that in recent days Mr. Giuliani's aides had intensely lobbied Ms. Thomson to vote against extending Dr. Crew's contract and had also spoken with Ms. Thomson's patron, Claire Shulman, the Queens borough president. But Ms. Thomson insisted yesterday that nobody had pressured her to vote against Dr. Crew. Instead, Ms. Thomson said, she had become increasingly troubled in recent months by Dr. Crew's indecisiveness and had decided that he was not sufficiently devoted to the students.

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''This is a decision that I made on my own with great soul-searching,'' Ms. Thomson told reporters. ''We need a chancellor who will give us 1,000 percent right now.''

The board members voting not to renew Dr. Crew's contract were Ms. Thomson, Deputy Mayor Ninfa Segarra, Jerry Cammarata of Staten Island and Irene H. Impellizeri. Voting for him were Mr. Thompson, of Brooklyn, Dr. Irving S. Hamer Jr. of Manhattan and Dr. Sandra E. Lerner of the Bronx.

The board had a deadline of Jan. 1 to tell Dr. Crew whether it wanted to extend his contract, but Mr. Thompson and the other members said in recent weeks that they needed to know if Dr. Crew truly wanted to stay. Early last week, Dr. Crew finally told Mr. Thompson that he wanted to stay for two or three years, and he asked Mr. Thompson to work out a new contract.

Dr. Crew's aides said that when he asked for the extension, he also requested a pension supplement worth twice his annual salary, or nearly $500,000. Ms. Segarra, one of Mr. Giuliani's two appointees to the board and one of Dr. Crew's harshest critics, said after the vote yesterday that the chancellor had also requested a raise and that those last-minute demands were ''the straw that broke the camel's back.'' Even some of Dr. Crew's strongest allies said privately yesterday that his request for a pension sweetener was unreasonable because it came so late.

Several of Dr. Crew's close supporters said this week that even they had grown exasperated by the chancellor's indecision, and that they thought he would be better off leaving. The supporters said Dr. Crew believed that the mayor had tried to orchestrate several events meant to damage his reputation.

In particular, Dr. Crew questioned the timing of recent reports from investigations charging that teachers had helped students cheat and that schools were padding their attendance rolls to get more state aid.

The attendance investigation came at the request of Gov. George E. Pataki, whose relationship with Dr. Crew has become increasingly contentious.

''There was all this political pile-on in the last couple of weeks designed to get his goat, and I know it made him more angry and distrustful,'' said Chiara Coletti, Dr. Crew's former press secretary. ''The mayor really knew how to pull the chancellor's tail.''

Dr. Crew has been considering a job offer from the University of Washington since the summer, and last month officials there said the offer, to lead a new education research institute, still stood.

Mr. Giuliani insisted last night that the four board members who had voted to oust Dr. Crew had made up their minds independently, but added that he had told them before the vote that he supported their plan. ''I agreed with it when they talked to me about it,'' Mr. Giuliani said. ''If you think about what's happened in the last, just the last four or five weeks, I don't see how they would come to any other decision.''

In particular, Mr. Giuliani cited Dr. Crew's response to the recent investigations of corruption in the school system and his last-minute request for a pension supplement.

Mr. Thompson, the board president, said the board would meet on Tuesday to discuss whether to offer Dr. Crew a financial incentive to leave early. They also plan to start a list of potential replacements. Although the board members would not mention any names yesterday, allies of Mr. Giuliani were said to be discussing Bill Rojas, who worked for 23 years in the city school system and is now the superintendent in Dallas.

Other potential replacements mentioned yesterday included Beverly Hall, a former deputy chancellor who is now the superintendent in Atlanta, and Anthony J. Alvarado, who was New York's chancellor for a year in the 1980's and now works in the San Diego school system.

Ms. Segarra and Mr. Cammarata said they thought it was imperative for the next chancellor to have worked extensively in the New York City schools. The board members who voted to keep Dr. Crew warned that a search would strain the system, but Ms. Segarra said students would not notice the turmoil.